Great Catherine: by George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw is no worshiper of great persona of history, and The Great Catherine of Russia does not escape his caricature. She is shown here as a barbaric ruler of a barbaric huge powerful nation, charmed by sophistication of a mere lowly officer of the British embassy in her empire.

Every caricature has some truth distorted, and here the fact is Russia was and is a huge nation spreading from eastern one third of Europe to the very eastern edge of Asia, and as a matter of fact Alaska belongs to US only because the 99 year old lease was lost during the revolution. The great wilderness of Siberia would be a nation large enough to be among first ten if it were independent, and neighbouring Yakutia joins it in the large wilderness of deep heart of Russia. So the populace is varied, there are well over a dozen languages and many faiths. Uniting all this is no joke, and the greater of the Russian monarchs did it by commanding loyalty from their subjects as Catherine the Great did.

And yes, they did look to west for bringing some sophistication to the vast wilderness, and the court language was French, spoken even among themselves by the upper class, often at home as well. That their heart stays Russian can be no doubt, but they were no barbarians of this caricature, post Peter the Great who built St Petersburg.

John Bull's Other Island; by George Bernard Shaw.

About the other English speaking island in Europe and the relationship between the two - England and Ireland, or rather Britain and Ireland; about their perceptions of themselves vs their perceptions of one another, and of matters of life and so forth in general. How English perceive Ireland romantically and yet would exploit it and the Irish people, how Irish would complain about the British but give them control of the land easily, and how each thinks the other quaint and ridiculous.

Perhaps it has occurred to others before, but is it possible Ireland makes Britain safer and more livable, being the buffer between Atlantic winds and waves and Britain, while Britain is surrounded by the warm gulf stream?

Durbar: by Tavleen Singh.

Most people in US are familiar with "where were you when Kennedy was shot", and world over more so about when Diana had a crash leading to her death. This book is somewhat like that for those that were living in or concerned with India through the years '75 - '91, through many many such moments - declaration of Emergency, lifting of Emergency, Indira Gandhi losing the election, ascendancy of Sanjay Gandhi and his death, Rajiv Gandhi taking over as his mother's helper and as prime minister post his mother's assasination, and more.

From Emergency years to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, Tavleen Singh traces the years and the people, the Nehru-Gandhi family and the coterie in Delhi, and her own life entwined with it all. A journalist by profession, she was also a part of the elite set of the capital of India, and so had a particular insight that comes from familiarity. But more importantly the insight is due to her early realisation of being a part of a set that was foreign in their own land, and this understanding has led to her comprehension of issues of Indian politics and of the people involved.

Durbar or darbaar (spellings in Roman script are not important in Indian words because Indian scripts match letters to sound far more scientifically, and so a correct pronunciation is important, which matches a unique spelling in an Indian script - something English language and Roman script lack) is literally court, as in court of a monarch, and the Nehru-Gandhi (not related to Mahatma Gandhi but to Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter who married Feroze Gandhi, not related to Mahatma Gandhi) family turned into a dynasty through the years described here.

Through the process of the party workers always choosing someone from the family to lead, the obsequies behaviour of the bureaucracy towards them and the immense lead they mostly - though not always - had in elections over others, the family that might have been a part of a decent set of politicians turned into a dynasty of rulers surrounded by sycophants that never would disagree with them, and were thrown out if they did. Which led more than once to their downfall in elections, but the opposition has generally not been strong or consolidated, and this worked in favour of Congress returning to power again, with hardly a decade or less of other parties in rule since independence.

Tavleen Singh describes the elite western oriented set that met in drawing rooms of one or other of the set, the meetings with Rajiv and Sonia and their friends, their lack of inclination towards politics in spite of living in the house of the Prime Minister his mother as per Indian joint family norm, and her encounters and experiences with the realities of India that are far from this elite drawing room set.

To anyone that lived through those years this is a deja vu, yet it provides much fresh insight into various issues through the years - unless one was there with her and knew it all, of course. What is far more likely is that this leads to a perspective due to one's own experience being different.

No Comebacks and The Shepherd; by Frederick Forsyth.

No Comebacks:-

The unforgettable - No Snakes in Ireland - and other equally good ones one has come to expect from Forsyth.

No snakes in Ireland especially remains in memory due to its twists and turns on a story of a person ridiculed and humiliated beyond endurance planning and executing a scheme to frighten and humiliate someone much larger, stronger and a bully in his own land, with a surprise and a fright; the surprise however is an element that weaves its own course what with a live being involved, and while the scheme goes out of hand the outcome is beyond all expectation.

Friday, July 16, 2010.
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The Shepherd:-

My kindle edition claimed 700 pages and so it was astonishing to finish it in an hour or so in one afternoon, having expected the usual Forsyth tale with detail, worldwide canvas and more. One had to check to make sure the kindle had delivered the whole book! It had, and then one realises it was published in '75 or so, and perhaps the number of pages is explained by the illustrations. Still, one is left wanting more, to begin with. Not that the story is unsatisfactory by itself, quite the contrary, it is beautiful and perhaps ends just right when it should rather than going on. But one does want more when one is just finished reading.

The synopsis everywhere pretty much tells what it is about, although it does not say how beautifully it is written. Quite lyrical, unlike most work of this author, although that is not to say his other works are lesser, merely different. This one is comparable rather to works of Richard Bach and James Hilton in its qualities of lyrical beauty. There is suspense of course, a matter of life and death, and more.

Friday, July 12, 2013.
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The Kill List: by Frederick Forsyth.

In The Kill List, Forsyth deals with problems faced today, not merely by first world or west, but any nation attempting to stay on a path of progress and well being of all its people, along lines of democracy and every individual's rights to life and liberty.

In an era where internet is used as means of communication over and above most others, it can become a weapon in hands of those that would see rights of humanity to life severely restricted along their own chosen political path whatever that may be, and it no longer requires a state machinery to curtail individual's life and liberty, or even a physical trail of evidence leading to a criminal; such a trail is often hard to trace, being chiefly albeit not only in cyberspace.

From a preacher that invites faithful with haranguing sermons to kill those of other paths of life, to the agencies that try to track down the source of multiple killings across various nations, to remote and primitive nation situated at the confluence of continents and conveniently at location suited for piracy and known recently for pirates, to various small groups and organisations that help track the pirates and kidnappers and killers and their leaders down, and men that risk their lives and more in this, Forsyth takes a reader across three continents and several time zones with a rather happy ending for most characters.

Sunday, January 5, 2014.
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One common mistake most people make is to assume that everyone else shares their thinking, emotions, preferences, and more importantly prejudices. Frederick Forsyth is no exception.

He shares the prejudice peculiar to colourful people, who usually - and quite mistakenly or falsely - are called "white"; mistakenly or falsely because it ought to be obvious to anyone with normal sight that if any person were really white rather than merely pale, such a person would look naked while dressed in white, and certainly no one does. Brides in church do not vanish with exception of hair and eyes and nor do men in white formal suits, nor anyone in a white bathing suit or lingerie.

The particular prejudice much prevalent in people that could more appropriately only be called pale - or technicolour, what with variety of colours of eyes and hair - is that beauty is defined by pale skin and even more so by colours of light eyes and - or - light hair. This they assume is a prejudice shared by everyone on earth, and perhaps they do not realise it is merely a prejudice rather than fact which perhaps they fail to notice it is most definitely not. For just one example, Elizabeth Taylor was beyond any possible argument one of the most beautiful women if not the most beautiful, and this was true when one could not see colour of her eyes, when she was a preteen and films she worked in were black and white.

In The Kill List, Forsyth describes how a man - from a part of what was India until a few decades ago - falls in love with a young woman from mountains of northern Kashmir, and marries her in spite of his family's objections and loses their support and more with no regrets on that account. Subsequently however he merely describes her as a woman with jade green eyes, and explains that some part of the spent force of Alexander's soldiers stayed on in the high mountains of Himaalaya in that region, rather than go through travails of return to Macedonia, and this is the reason some people there can be found with light eyes. He thereafter unfailingly refers to the son of the couple as one with amber eyes, almost making it as the only possible way to identify someone.

Forsyth - like many of his race or nation or continent or generally west, even, perhaps - fail to realise that not only Asia but in fact India teems with people of all sorts of colouring, and while light skin is more common than light eyes, while light hair is more rare, none of it is so rare as to be an identity of someone from India much less central Asia; more to the point, it is not considered a definition or chief feature of beauty either.

And with good reason - one only has to open one's eyes and look, really look, to see just how many pf the colourful races are in fact not good looking at all, much less beautiful; and the other side of that is just as true - other races teem with people of good looks just as much as the technicolour ones do. Any prejudices for light skin exist either in people of light skin or at most in people colonised and ruled by them.

Monday, January 6, 2014.
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